New Owner? Check What Model You Really Have

A couple of weeks ago I saw several people on the forum, apparently new users, confused by the stickers or the lack of clear information regarding the model they purchased. Let’s be honest, there is a clear lack of a simple system tool to confirm that “hey, you have a CC Pandora” or something else. An interesting discussion followed on how to determine which model you actually have, and I packaged a small script in a PND a couple of days ago.

The PND is called Pandora Model Check and it does just that: it displays a simple window with the information on the Pandora model you have. If you are a new & lazy Pandora owner you can download it and check if you did indeed receive the model you ordered.

Sorry, no women nor lolcats this time. You know that “cloud” stuff is hot now anyway?

On a side note, I am a little surprised that no one ever made such a simple tool before. It has been such a common request from new users since the 1 GHz came out and created confusion about the available models. This kind of thing should have been included within the latest firmwares in the first place. But the good thing about the Pandora is that anyone can contribute and create new software, so even an amateur like me could go and do something about it (and get laughed at since my implementation is, by definition, amateurish… I need a cold shower now).

Now, If you are more intrepid and want to go beyond that PND, you may just open a terminal session and check for yourself how this really works… but you may wonder: “why do I even need to bother? Man, you know the lastest apkenv just came out and I could play World of Goo right now instead of reading this?“.

Apart from confirming whether or not you were scammed on your purchase, finding out about the Pandora model is useful as well in case you develop for Pandora. You may want to know what kind of unit is running your program, to adjust the settings accordingly. Up until now it was assumed that all programs would run about the same on all units, but as recent emulators (PPSSPP, or DraStic) or games like SuperTuxKart push the envelope further, it may be a good idea to customize some of your code or settings for each Pandora target. I don’t think developers have included such customizations so far in their programs but that may change in the near future, and the below lines will prove helpful in such cases.

There are several ways to differentiate a unit from another. First, the obvious filter is the RAM size. CC models have 256 Mb, Rebirth and 1Ghz editions have 512 Mb. That can be easily determined with the following bash instruction:

grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo | awk '{print $2}'

This gives you the RAM in kB. Divide by 1024 if you want in megabytes, and note that you will not get exactly 512MB or 256MB since the total amount of RAM actually varies for some reason. My advice: if it’s more than 256MB, then you should safely assume you have a Rebirth of a 1Ghz in hand. If less, you have an original CC model.

Then, the difference between the Rebirth edition and the 1Ghz is more tricky. They have different chips but it’s not so straightforward to tell them apart. One way (and there are others) is to check the maximum memory/GPU clock speed, which should be 400 Mhz for 1Ghz and 332 Mhz for the Rebirth/CC editions.

cat /proc/pandora/sys_mhz_max

It’s possible, however, to overclock that parameter on older models, therefore it’s better to assume that any model running with a speed higher than 390 Mhz can only be a 1Ghz model – since the other models are not supposed to be stable at such frequencies.

These are known working tricks to indirectly find what your Pandora Model is. There are other ways you can try, but these should be working for most of the cases. And if I am wrong, I will have to revise Pandora Model Check and you should refer to the code base on github if better ways are identified.

So, there you go. If you wonder how to specifically support one Pandora model or the other, you now have a base to start with. Hope it helps.

I have to say that Pandora Model Check doesn’t show me the right infos or my model. I have a 1Ghz Edition, but it shows me that I have a Rebirth. Also, it says I have Firmware 1.52, but I have 1.54 installed.

About the firmware, that’s a known issue with the “upgrade OS” method. You probably already have the latest firmware, but unless you do a full reflash it will not show up correctly in the system, that is why the wording says “you latest full reflash firmware was with…”. Upgrading your firmware with “upgrade OS” is not considered a full reflash.

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4 years ago

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What’s This ?

GiantPockets (Previously Known as Pandoralive.info) is a blog dedicated to the Pocket Linux Handheld computers (such as the Open Pandora and the upcoming DragonBox Pyra, but also non-gaming handhelds like the GPD Pocket). These handhelds can be used for gaming but for a bunch of serious uses as they can run full Linux distributions and are typically equipped with physical keyboards. You will find here news regarding their latest software offering, hardware updates, development stories and testimonies of users.